I’m writing a novel in 90 days

Photo: Annie Spratt

Well, a first draft.

I started writing this blog post during my first ever listen to ‘Young Guns’ by Wham!, as suggested by Louise, my new tutor for this novel writing journey that I am just embarking upon. Louise is probably my new favourite person just from the way she has made me think about writing like I’ve ever thought before.

In case you’re wondering what all this is about, you may have read my post from only the other day about how I wanted to write but I didn’t know what, or how to start. And then Louise gets in touch asking me if I want to write a novel in 90 days. My first thought was “fucking hell, how?” and my next thought was “well why not?” I had always imagined the process of writing an actual, physical novel to take years of sleepless nights where I’d find myself at the bottom of a bottle and completely out of my mind. But it turns out it really doesn’t have to be like that at all.

Louise Dean set up Kritikme, her online novel writing course, when she was about to start writing her fifth novel so that she could write along with the people on the course and share her methods with them. The 90-day plan is designed so that you can work around your day job, writing for an hour a day with a series of structured, daily lessons to help you along the way and keep you focused, making sure that you’re always doing your best work.

I soon discovered when I signed up for the course that this wasn’t just a little bit of fun for people who fancied doing a few creative writing exercises. I realised that this might actually be the biggest commitment I’ve made in my life so far. You can break up with someone, or move on from somewhere, but you can’t really escape writing something once it’s in your head. So this is it. This is me finally marrying writing after it’s 54th proposal.

I’m not really sure what I was expecting when I went into this, only two days ago, but I’ve always considered writing courses to be a little bit naff, even my degree included (sorry). But this course is already the perfect mixture of completely serious, beautifully inspiring and yet so freeing and relaxing. I know it’s going to be a challenge, but I’m always up for a challenge. (Apart from the time I considered running the London Marathon and then it turned out I was months of fitness away from even being able to start the training programme. Oh well. Maybe next year.)

So this will be me, now, for the next 90 days. Writing, taking lessons from the wonderful Louise and blogging about it on the way, probably as a way to freely moan about writers’ block more than anything else. I’ll let you know how it goes, but if Kritikme has already turned my head around in two days, who knows what it can do in ninety.

If you’re already thinking of joining the 90-day plan, you can get 10% off the cost of the course with discount code SLUMMY10.